AutoCAD Map 3D :: Random Items In Drawing Will Not Plot
Apr 12, 2011
I have one user who cannot plot correctly from his workstation. All of his drawings will be missing information when they are plotted although they look perfect in the print preview. For example, at the bottom of every drawiing, he puts in a single text block: "Drawn by: SLM" and sometimes the 'S' in his initials won't get plotted, etc. He can save any of those drawings to a shared drive and plot them from a different workstation and there is no issue. We are using AutoCAD Map 3D 2010 on Windows 7 32bit.
I am hoping to link text items between pages and items in the drawing such as elevations?
So, ideally, I would have a front page to my drawing set, and this would have a 'Contents' type table on it, with the title name of each drawing in one column, then the drawing number in the next column. This is the tricky bit, someone must know: If i was to change the name / number of any item in this table, could it change also (linked to) the following items:
Drawing title (as a text idem on the layout sheet that that drawing relates to)
Drawing number (as a text idem on the layout sheet that that drawing relates to)
Elevation call-out (on the plan view)
And possibly:
Excel reference cell
Drawing layout tab title (this might be pushing it!!)
Perhaps this could be done by linking to an external Excel spreadsheet with these titles modified in there? I'm not sure. This would be ideal as typing into excel is a lot easier than the triple click text modify method required currently.
I waste a lot of time renaming and updating sheet names / titles / numbers. Are there standard templates for drawing sets that may have this built in available anywhere that I could try?
First of all, some details as to what we are working on:
Mac OSX 10.6.8 Illustrator CS6 Accessing files on a shared network drive
I have been working on a file for a number of months now with no problems at all. Right at the point of it being signed off today I opened it to prep for printing (outline fonts, check colours etc.). When I opened it I noticed a number of the graphics (embedded graphics, not linked files) and areas of text were missing. Completely missing. No text boxes, no sign of any images having been there, just GONE. I closed the file without saving and opened it in CS5 - neither the graphics or the text appeared in CS5 either.
Nobody except myself and the other guy has access to these files (nor the softare to open them). The file has not been opened since June 6th when I last made a change (and everything was fine!).
This is not the only file we have discovered this problem with - there was another occurence of this with a completely different file yesterday which we put down to a small glitch, but this is now getting worrying. Yesterday it was graph items, so we thought it was something to do with those. Today it is bog standard graphics and text (no font issues either).
Now, I have also noticed something else with this particular file - it is acting more like an imported PDF than an original Illy file in that items are linked together (un-linked by right-clicking and selecting 'release clipping mask'). I don't know if this could be related? It was definitely created from scratch in Illustrator, and none of the items were linked in such way, or imported from another file.
I am trying to create a script to specify a percentage of the selected items you want to remove.Here is what I have so far.
I still need to work out on the alert prompt and the if statement, but for now, I have the feeling that the selection.length keep changing each time Illustrator delete an object, and I don't know how to make it stick.
var selection = app.activeDocument.selection; //alert prompt dialog for a percentage of deletion for (var i = 0; i < selection.length; i++) { if (Math.random < 0.5) { //need to work out the percentage alert("yes") selection[i].remove(); } }
I am doing some engineering drawings in ACAD 2011. I use multiple colors on-screen to discern between certain items, then plot everything in black, like I'm sure almost everyone out there does. However, I would like to print only lines of a certain layer in differing colors. Is there a way to have that one layer print in a different color besides black, yet still use multiple colors on-screen?
We do most of our drawing in 2D – quaint I know, but that’s the way the office works. On occasion we’ll do something as a solid model to guide a client understand a complex roof or a clearance problem. We started a model for a project we are working on and ended up using it as building elevations.
The problem is with plotting. If I use our standard office CTB (which is set to print as black), I get color printouts no matter what I try. I have tried using an STB and changing all our layer colors to “7” in an attempt to make it print black, but I'm getting extremely undesirable - seemingly random - line weight results.
The client wants the next project done in 3D as well and I’d like to be able to have the elevations look right.
When I use the pdf plot drivers from AutoCAD or the export to pdf option the resulting pdf is not available to the other computer trying to access it through a shared folder.
When I plot to pdf with batch plot or export the drawing to pdf and save the file in the shared folder, the other computer can not open the pdf (file not found) or attach the file to an email (you do not have permission)
Why is this? All other files share and open fine. Only pdf files from batch plot, plot to dwg to pc3, or export to pdf. This is a pain and I still have to use another plot driver (cutepdf) to get a fully useable pdf for our office.
Is there a way to create a point group of random points within a drawing and adjust the elevations for the points within that group? Some of the points in the group may have been manually created and some may have been imported by way of "Import Events"..
I created a drawing, saved it, and days later most lines have dissapear. At preview you can see the drawing is complete, but when you open it is incomplete. Checked the BAK file, same thing, and there are no layers shut down. What can I do to recover my drawing?
When printing in 3d with the vp set to 3dhidden and the shade plot set to hidden legacy some solid items print with the wire frame. This usualy happens with torus and cones. How do I stop this?
I'm using autocad 2000 and I have a problem printing & plotting. The print, plot preview only shows a section of the drawing. What settings do I need to change for the entire drawing to print for the paper size I need.
Is it possible to change a drawing using named plot styles (.stb) to colourdependent plot styles (.ctb) within the drawing itself? The variable'pstylemode' comes up as read-only.
I'm attempting to change the descriptions of items in my drawing that say S/40 to S/80. It's too time consuming to individually change every description. Is there a way to change them all at once? Or maybe point to a database for the description?
I'm wanting to copy some elements from one drawing to a different .dwg file to make sure it's identical. I can't just simply use the COPY command. At least it didn't work for me.
I am trying to move a component within a part drawing, not an assembly. When I do "move bodies" it wants to move every extrusion within my drawing. If I click move face, then I have to click every face that I want to move (which is time consuming) and then it often times doesn't work? Sometime it works other times it just moves the origin indicator and doesn't move the faces I have selected.
I don't know about others having drawing that either have DGN trash like linetypes or (Cells) blocks that seem to not purge out even if you use the regular wblock command.
And if you go to purge and toggle "View items you cannot purge" you see them.
You want to clean the drawing and you want to keep all your paperspace tabs so you will end up with a clean drawing.
1) use the command -wblock
2) enter a new name
3) enter * (that will tell Autocad to create a new drawing with everything in it)
4) close the old drawing don't save and open your new clean drawing with all your paperspace tabs, your done!
I have a drawing with an XREF in it and both drawing have items on layer 0. Is there a way of freezing the items in the XREF drawing that are on layer 0 but still layer 0 on in my drawing?
When I create a "Break" in a view, Inventor glitches. The other views, and even the border, title block, and whatever else is in the drawing, will disappear. The other items reappear if I "Zoom All". Is there an update?
I have some hardware in my parts list drawings that has a substitute for each other. So you can use one of either item in the list. Per the ASME guidelines, those two parts share the same item number in the parts list. So my question is there any way to tell those two parts they are substitute from each other and they come into the parts list sharing that same item number. Right now i'm manually changing that item number in the parts list. But if you try to re-order those parts it's a nightmare cause it's still treating that other item as a seperate entity.
I have one drawing per file at model tab. When I need to plot a multiple page file, I use:
Print > Batch Plot.
The problem is that I have to set plot configurations ( plot style table, plot area, paper size, etc) in each file before use Batch Plot.
Now I received 722 files with a wrong Plot Style Table. For this time I change the associated *.ctb file at Plot Style folder, but I will need to associate the right *.ctb to each drawing. It's also common to have to change other properties.
I want to be able to plot a drawing as a PDF (to send to customers, vendors, etc.) and not have the PDF able to be converted back to a DWG (as so many programs out there are able to do).
I have LT08 and have one drawing using linestyles and colors to determine lineweight for plotting that just will not plot anything other than a "light" lineweight. I have tried making an all new .cbt, existing .cbt's, changing ALL colors to a heavier weight etc. Nothing is working.
Plot preview is light lineweight, plotting to pdf is light and plotting to the plotter is light. I am not having this problem with any other drawings so there must be something set somewhere in this one file. I did not create the model. Someone else did but I did setup the layout sheet, just like I do other drawings.
I try to plot the current drawing as pdf file. I took Kean's code from his blog. The function didn't throw any exception. How ever after the function finished the drawing crash.
Here is my code segment
<CommandMethod("pdfTest")> _ Public Sub PDFTest() Dim doc As Document = Application.DocumentManager.MdiActiveDocument Dim ed As Editor = doc.Editor Dim db As Database = doc.Database Using tr As Transaction = db.TransactionManager.StartTransaction Try Dim btr As BlockTableRecord = tr.GetObject(db.CurrentSpaceId, OpenMode.ForRead) Dim lo As Layout = tr.GetObject(btr.LayoutId, OpenMode.ForRead)
I have a problem when I am trying to plot auto-cad drawing. I have tried to set the scale in layout to 1/8" : 1' and I create a page set up and choose 24x36 paper size then when I try to print leaving the scale at the printer window to be 1:1 but when I press preview to see how the plot going to be, the drawing became very small at the lower left corner of the paper.
I've recently upgraded to AutoCAD 2012 and CADS RC 2012 and a really annoying thing has starting happening! Every time I open a new drawing or an existing one, all the layers are automatically set to 'no plot' so print previews come up completely blank every time! I then need to manually go through all the layers setting them to plot or no plot as required!
